Toroidal bubbles with circulation in ideal hydrodynamics: a variational approach.

Incompressible, inviscid, irrotational, unsteady flows with circulation Gamma around a distorted toroidal bubble are considered. A general variational principle that determines the evolution of the bubble shape is formulated. For a two-dimensional (2D) cavity with a constant area A, exact pseudodifferential equations of motion are derived, based on variables that determine a conformal mapping of the unit circle exterior into the region occupied by the fluid. A closed expression for the Hamiltonian of the 2D system in terms of canonical variables is obtained. Stability of a stationary drifting 2D hollow vortex is demonstrated, when the gravity is small, gA(3/2)/Gamma(2)<<1. For a circulation-dominated regime of three-dimensional flows a simplified Lagrangian is suggested, inasmuch as the bubble shape is well described by the center line R(xi,t) and by an approximately circular cross section with relatively small area, A(xi,t)<<(contour integral operator |R'|dxi)(2). In particular, a finite-dimensional dynamical system is derived and approximately solved for a vertically moving axisymmetric vortex ring bubble with a compressed gas inside.